This I Believe

I believe in being in love. Being in love is the one emotion I think about at one second or the other in the day. I turn on the radio and hear people singing about it, I tuck myself in at night and dream or lose sleep worrying about the powerful emotion I refer to as being in love. When I don’t have love with a special someone, I’m searching for it and when I believe I have discovered it, I’m not quite sure what to do with the strange feeling that with the one right guy, gives me the feeling of about a billion fluttery butterflies in my stomach. Being in love is by far the only emotion that is capable of giving me the highest highs and lowest lows and I never know when pleasure and pain are going to hit me.

I grew up watching my mother feel the encompassing power of being in love. She was always head over heals for the man that cherished every little thing about her, that man is my father. I saw first hand what being in love can do to a person because when my father was around my mother, I could see my mom as happy as a person could be but the day my mother lost the love of her life to tragedy, those butterflies left her stomach leaving her behind with a broken heart. Even though my mother is not able to be with my father any longer, she has always stressed how great the power of being in love really is and when you are actually in love with the right person, you just know. Because of my parents, I truly and deeply believe in being in love and all that it is capable of doing to a person.

I’ve kept my mother’s words close to my heart always. I dated frequently in high school, never trying to fall in love with a particular guy just because I wanted to feel its power. I knew from my mother that you can’t pick who you want to fall in love with; it just happens. Dating was an activity I thoroughly enjoyed even though all the dating thus far had been casual. But, just like my mother warned me, love hit me out of nowhere. I met a boy that gives me all the crazy, mixed up, tingly, dizzy feelings that come with the package of being in love. An Italian boy named Gian-Marc came into my life when I least expected it but now that he is in my life, I pray everyday that I’m with him to the end. I have always dreamed of having the kind of love my mother always spoke of and the kind I was able to witness first hand from her, but until I met Gian-Marc, it was always a little hard to truly believe in being in love and all the feelings it entails.

Shop on Amazon and support This I Believe

We receive up to 10% of every purchase you make on Amazon through this link. So do all your holiday shopping here and help support This I Believe!

Top 100 Essays USB Drive

This USB drive contains 100 of the top This I Believe audio broadcasts of the last ten years, plus some favorites from Edward R. Murrow's radio series of the 1950s. It's perfect for personal or classroom use! Click here to learn more.

This week’s essay

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.